Minimum Wage: The Labour Force insists on an increment of minimum wage.

Mr. Joe Ajaero, the president of Nigeria Labor Congress and the managing director of finance, Mr. Bismarck Rewane, spoke about an increment of minimum wage from ₦497,000 to ₦615,000 at the annual Economic Discourse in Lagos,

Mr. Rewane argued that the minimum wage demanded by the Labour Congress was too much. Ajaero insisted that the minimum wage was in line with the county’s socio-economic status.

This came as the Presidency yesterday said the ₦497,000 demand by Labour as the new minimum wage was unrealistic and advised labour to be serious in its demand.

The presidency also said that the NLC’s demand of ₦497,00 as the minimum wage was unrealistic and even advised the NLC to be serious with the Government about their demands.

Ajaero was the panellist at that discourse. He stated that the prices of food items, other services, transportation, and electricity are all high, making it impossible for people to feed themselves and still have savings.

He said, “From all that we have been discussing here, there is a benchmark, which is the dollar; it is a common factor we use. The cost of living index determines wages. I want you to benchmark it with probably a bag of rice, which is about ₦84,000 today.

“I would equally want you to ask people who refill their gas cylinders how much it costs them, maybe ₦16,000 or ₦17,000, and it is once or twice a month, which is about ₦30,000 plus. I would equally want you to benchmark it to a plate of ‘Mama-put’ (Roadside food vendor) at N500 without meat.

“When you do that, with a family of six, you are going to get ₦270,000 in a month. We can go on and on. I want you to equally look at the United Nations, UN, provision that no human being should live on less than $2 per day.

“For a family of six, that will amount to $12. Multiply it, and you get $360. Then, convert it with the current exchange rate.

“Ordinarily, I would have asked you to convert this money to dollars, and you would see that it translates to about $20, which is the least all over the world.

“Do you want labour to suggest that people should live on less than $1, not even $2 per day?

‘Living wage is different from minimum wage’

“A living wage is that which will keep you and your family, at least, for you to eat till the end of the month. The fact that you have so much devalued your naira to the point that it doesn’t have weight gain should not make us not feed or go to work and not come back.

“No worker, including those in this hall today, goes to work and back without spending at least ₦2,000 a day. In a month, it is ₦60,000. Now check all these things and see whether a worker earning ₦615,000 in a month will have one naira in savings.

“We deliberately did not put communication. We deliberately did not put a tithe in our calculation, and we assume that a worker does not have parents. That is what brought us where we are today on the issue, and on the premise that it creates inflation, I disagree with you because inflation is already here with us.

“It is a real wage that grows the economy because when workers earn, they purchase. When you increase the purchasing power of workers, the economy will grow, and you have proper productivity.

“In Ghana, they review wages annually. If inflation is maybe three per cent, it is factored into it. Even in the United Kingdom, wages are adjusted based on the level of inflation. Yes, it is an index. If we have three per cent, it will be self-adjusted for that year.

“Even if you give us ₦615,000 for the next five years, it will be meaningless because if you are one of the people who prescribed this, it is weighing heavily on us.”

In the panel discussion, the NLC President said: “We are talking about reserves. You cannot continue to talk about reserves when people are dying of poverty. What are you going to do with reserves? The purpose of any government is for the good of the people.

“Whether workers or ordinary citizens, if you are talking of reserves, saving money and economic policies that are forcing people into poverty, how do you reconcile it because one of the eight-point agenda of the President is to eradicate poverty?

‘’Again, by the time we came up with the issue of wage award for which they gave ₦35,000, an amount which is neither here nor there, we came up with some measures before the negotiation of minimum wage.

“We asked if you could adopt the Compressed Natural Gas, CNG policy. The CNG issue came from us, and we explained to them that the CNG option would help Nigeria and would be eco-friendly.

In this option, if you are supposed to fill your car tank with N50,000 petrol, you will fill it with ₦15,000 if we apply CNG.

‘’If you do this, even with the cost of PMS, then the cost of transportation will go down, and prices of other things will stop moving. However, the government preferred to have abortions before pregnancy.

“However, they said we prefer to deregulate, and they removed the subsidy before looking at how to cushion the effect. One year later, that cushion has not come.

“We decided to adopt a palliative policy, that is what the government is in today. A government of palliatives, tell me of any other reform that is working. Even the palliatives they promised, they said it should be cash transfers to the most vulnerable. As of today, there has never been any cash transfer to anybody.

“You were talking of reserves; it looks like you are having a kind of situation where people are dying and you are keeping reserves. You did not mention the corruption figures in Nigeria in building reserves.

“Some of the reserves built in the past were looted. If you identify that point of having billions and billions being looted by people, you can’t build reserves in the face of corruption. It is not possible. That is one vital point. Now that oil prices are going up, you cannot continue to refine abroad. “The period you are supposed to make money for your growth from oil, you are just importing refined products because no refinery is working in Nigeria, nothing is functioning.

“It is like a theory of producing cassava on your farm, and you sell cassava to buy an illegal product.

‘’Now, between the time this last subsidy was removed and now, is Nigeria not paying more money in subsidy? Now, we have to face reality. For sloganeering, we have removed the subsidy while we are paying more for the subsidy.

“We should tell ourselves the truth. You know, there is no need to talk about reserves when they are going to completely loot the reserves.

‘’We cannot quickly forget the Justice Okigbo commission report on $12.4 billion missing oil windfall and whatnot. In this country, even when they take a loan, the loan disappears. Why can’t we come out openly and discuss our problems? And look at the hitches which corruption is causing to proffer solutions.”